5.Michel Reynolds — Direct (Part 1)

MICHEL REYNOLDS: My name is Michel Reynolds, M-i-c-h-e-l, R-e-y-n-o-l-d-s.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Good morning.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I live in Princeton, New Jersey.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I teach in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University where I am an associate professor, and I teach courses on the history, politics, and culture of the Middle East and what we now call Russia and Eurasia.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I have been teaching there ten years.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I have a B.A. from Harvard University in government, or political science, and Slovak languages and literatures. I received my M.A. from Columbia University where I studied political science. And my doctorate is from Princeton University in the field of Near Eastern Studies.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I do.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Academically, I would say it's been an interest of mine since 1996. Personally, it's been an interest of mine since 1989.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, that's correct.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I am.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I have. My degree is in Near Eastern Studies, which is an older term for Middle Eastern studies. And as part of that, as my graduate training, I studied Islam, and many of my courses also address the topic of Islam.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Excuse me?

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I have.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, I have not. This is my first time.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Thank you.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: You asked me to perform essentially two tasks. One was to review the material found on the computers of the defendant and other people involved in this case.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, exactly, including his brother Tamerlan. I reviewed those materials, videos, links to websites, textual materials. Other materials included FBI reports. I believe there were reports from the Russian Security Services.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, many of them were. Hundreds out of maybe -- the number might go into the thousands. There was a lot of material. I also reviewed essays written by the defendant. So that was one task. The other task was to provide historical and cultural background about the Chechens and the peoples of the North Caucasus.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Chechens are a small people. Today their population, roughly speaking, is about 1.2 million. They are classified as a mountain peoples. They live in the North Caucasus. In terms of language, their language -- the Chechen language is part of the group called the Nakh Dagestani Group. That's significant in that it is not related at all to Slovak. So the Chechens have no -- are not Russians or Slovs.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, absolutely not.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: It's completely different from Russian or from any other -- from any Indo-European language, for that matter, nor is it related to Arabic. The Chechens are not Arabs. They're not Turks. Their language has no relationship to Turkish, nor do they ethnically, nor are they related to Persians, to Iranians, another group near the Caucasus. This is significant. The Chechens have been living in the Caucasus --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, it does.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: So the Northern Caucasus refers to the northern side of the Great Caucasus range.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, there is.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Well, in 2014, the Winter Olympics were held in Sochi.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes. That shows the site where the Winter Olympics were held.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. That is the Caucasus.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That would put you in Chechnya.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes, it is.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That is correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Chechens have been living in the Caucasus since well before recorded time, that is, thousands of years.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Chechnya is a heavily -- it's a mountainous area, like Dagestan, also heavily forested. And topography has had profound implications for any culture and social organization of the Chechens and the other mountain peoples of the North Caucasus.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. One can see mountains and a small village community.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: They weren't -- up until the middle of the 19th Century, Chechnya has never known anything like centralized rule. The Chechens essentially lived on their own in a -- without any centralized -- so they were neither part of a larger state, nor did they have anything that we would recognize as a state today; that is, there was no Chechen president. There was no Chechen emperor. There's no Chechen king. There was no centralized body of authority.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, there was no capital city. Instead, the Chechens, like the other mountain peoples of the North Caucasus, lived in small, isolated communities. Communities are isolated, of course, because they're living in the mountains. And they are small, of course, living in the mountains, there's limited space to build homes. Also, the land and mountains is relatively poor, so it cannot support large populations. So as a result, the mountain peoples live scattered in autonomous, small villages in the mountains. And this has had important implications for their culture.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Right. There was -- as I said, there was nothing. There was no president, no king, nor is there anything like a police service; there's no sheriff. So there were two particular challenges that mountain peoples face. One is the need to maintain social cohesion. So, as I said, these are difficult -- life in the mountains is precarious.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Absolutely, yes. This is -- yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, absolutely.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: One is the importance of maintaining social cohesion. As I said, living in the mountains is a very precarious existence, and it's very important that the community stick together. You cannot separate from the community. You will perish if you were to do that in the mountains; and, likewise, the community depends upon every person, member, within it doing their part, their share. So it's quite important that everybody basically know their place and that they prevent the community from breaking up, that they all get along. The second challenge that mountain communities face is that of self-protection. Each of these is living on -- they're isolated. Because they live in the mountains, it's very difficult to travel, to communicate with others. So every community has to provide for its own self-protection. And as a result of these two needs, the mountain peoples developed a code of conduct and behaviors. This is called Adat. That's spelled A-d-a-t. And this is a social code that regulates everything from property rights inside of a community to the way that people within families interact.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Well, Chechen families, like the other mountain peoples of the North Caucasus, the family units are very strong. They've had to be. They are described -- they are, I should say, very patriarchal. That is, it is the elder men, the father in the family, is the person who over -- who runs the family and is responsible both for the welfare of the family, that is, the social -- I should say rather the material well-being of the family, as well as the cohesion of the family.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, very much so. So the father, of course -- there are cases, of course, where the father becomes incapacitated, either perhaps dies or is injured, et cetera. And then the role of the father is filled by the eldest brother. And brothers, there is a hierarchy among the brothers. And, again, for the purpose of cohesion, it's expected that the younger brothers will listen to the older brother.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Absolutely. This is something that is inculcated in children from their birth, from the very beginning. So the relationships between brothers and towards fathers is something that is -- certainly exists before anything happens to the father.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The younger brother owes his deference to the older brother, and he owes his loyalty to the older brother because it's understood to the older brother and to the family as a whole.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. I wouldn't want to push this analogy too far, but one could draw comparison between the family structure and that of a military unit in that, just as a military unit is hierarchal and has discipline for the purposes of maintaining unit cohesion and for purposes of self-protection, so too have the mountain peoples of the Caucasus developed a system of discipline and hierarchy to maintain, again, social cohesion and discipline in times of need, in times of emergency.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, it is not unique to the Chechens. The other Highland peoples of the Caucasus, such as those -- many of those living in Dagestan. Also in the Northwest Caucasus one can find very similar patterns of family or social structure and behavior.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Avars are a people who live in the highlands of Dagestan. They also are the -- ethnically and linguistically, their language also is considered a Caucasian language, meaning that it is not related to anything outside of the Caucasus and also a Highland peoples. I can go on.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Similar. I mean, their language is very, very distantly related to the Chechens. But in terms of their social organization, by and large, they are similar.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Both the Avars and the Chechens and the majority of the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus are Sunni Muslims.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I would.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: They learn them from the -- from growing up, from birth onwards. These are patterns of behavior that they are -- that they witness, that they play out in their -- from the beginning of their lives.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: It's a very powerful culture.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. We know that from Chechen groups living in diaspora, that is, outside of Chechnya, both in the former Soviet Union, and then those who lived in the Middle East and are living in the Middle East today. You see very similar patterns of family organization and behavior.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Well, the eldest brother would be, again, expected to look after the material well-being of the family and, again, its cohesion.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, absolutely. People from the outside often see this as something as a -- it's a position of honor, which it is, but it's also a position of great responsibility and a burden.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. I would -- Chechen's modern history, perhaps very simplistically, identify four key moments or watershed moments. One of those occurred in 1859 when Chechnya and the rest of the North Caucasus was conquered by the Russian Empire, subjugated after a war that roughly ran for four decades, a war in which the Russian Empire used everything at its -- all the means of its disposal so both the military, did things such as destroying homes, destroys farmland, even poisoning water wells to deny the people water to drink. That is, they used -- the empire used every means at their disposal because the resistance that it faced was so strong. In part, this was a reflection of the strength of the mountain communities of the North Caucasus. They famously resisted. So that took place in 1859 when Dagestan and Chechnya were both finally conquered.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The next moment I would say occurred in 1917 when the Russian Empire had a revolution. The Czarist Regime -- the czar fell. And Chechnya had a brief moment of independence, 1917 to about 1919 when it was reconquered, this time by the Bolshevists, and it was forcibly reincorporated into what became the Soviet Union.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I do.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. In 1944 -- to be more specific, on 23 February 1944 -- Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, gave the order that the Chechen nation was to be deported en masse; that is, every single Chechen living inside of Chechnya was to be deported to Central Asia, that is, to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This was in -- during World War II. The Soviet Union was at war with Germany. And the official accusation was that the Chechens had betrayed the Soviet Union, although this was -- and collaborated -- the charge was collaboration with the German armies, although the fact was that the German armies had never actually entered Chechnya. More likely, the reason for this is because the Soviet Union was at that time getting ready for a war -- potential war with Turkey. It was making territorial demands. But the --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: There were roughly 400,000.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: They were all -- virtually all of them were put on cattle cars and sent from Chechnya. Again, this was on February 23rd. This is when it began. And with about -- within a week to two weeks virtually the whole nation had been put on cattle cars, sent to Central Asia. These cattle cars had no facilities. They were not equipped to carry human beings. There was no provision made for feeding people, no provisions even made for things such as toilets. And they were loaded onto the cattle cars, sent to Central Asia, where they did not find any sort of facilities waiting for them. There's no housing. It was not prepared. The majority of them were simply kicked out and left on the step to fend for themselves.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. There was an extraordinarily high mortality rate as one might expect from -- in a matter of days, packing people into cattle cars. Estimates are -- range -- I would say the most reliable, about a third of the population died in the years both during the deportations and then, say, about two years after that due to disease, from -- and starvation and the general negligence and mistreatment.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, that is correct.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, they did not assimilate. They maintained their identity as Chechens.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Absolutely. The majority -- and virtually all Chechens would have had relatives, for example, grandparents who had lived through that experience. And if they were one of the very few who didn't experience it, they would have -- or whose families did not experience it, they would certainly have known about it.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I did, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, they were pretty mainstream.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. Under -- in 1956, they were permitted to return to Chechnya.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, some did remain.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Right. Those who could return did. Those who could not, stayed where they had been deported.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The fourth one, I would say, is the breakup of the Soviet Union. That occurred in 1991. When the Soviet Union broke up, the constituent Republics of the Soviet Union -- there were 15 of them -- left the Soviet Union and became sovereign, independent states. Chechnya, because -- although it was a distinct part of the Russian Federation, because it was part of the Russian Federation, did not become an internationally recognized sovereign state. But there was a movement inside of Chechnya that pushed for Chechnya's emergence as an independent sovereign state, that is, a state that would be separate from Russia, from the Russian Federation.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That independence movement -- again, to keep things simple, that independence movement, the government was established in Chechnya that insisted that it was independent. Moscow, however, refused to recognize that independence; and in December of 1994, the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, ordered an invasion of Chechnya.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. This is what is usually called The First Chechen War.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, it was not in any way. The government that was formed in Chechnya was, in fact, explicitly a secular government, and it's one that aspired to the establishment of a Chechen national state.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Again, to keep things simple, the Russian Army invaded in December 1994. That triggered the war that lasted about a year and eight months. And it was quite a destructive war. There are no -- there's no definite number of casualties. The lower estimates say that something like 50,000 people died. Other estimates go up to around 100,000 people killed.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That shows the capital of Chechnya, Grozny, after the initial Russian invasion. This is from The First Chechen War.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. This is the result of artillery barrages and aerial bombardment.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Roughly, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Right. So the estimates in the first war, lower estimates are around 50,000 people were killed. Other estimates go as high as 100,000. 100,000 is probably the most commonly cited figure for deaths.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, it did begin to change.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Excuse me?

MICHEL REYNOLDS: How. In particular, in 1995, a Saudi citizen by the name of Amir Khattab arrived in Chechnya.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. Amir Khattab is the one on the left, left-hand side, wearing the beret.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Right, yes. The jihadis saw the Chechen struggle as a wonderful opportunity for them to exploit. That is, they saw here was a small nation, Muslim nation, that was fighting a great power that was having some success in doing so during The First Chechen War. And in 1995, they began arriving in significant numbers inside of Chechnya. They were, by and large, well-armed and they were also -- perhaps even more importantly, they were well-funded. So someone like Amir Khattab had gone initially to Afghanistan to wage jihad and saw that --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. And then saw that here was a movement in Chechen to further the cause of jihad. So he arrived in Chechnya as well as other jihadis. And I should maybe just add, he was quite a charismatic figure. He made a name for himself, in particular, by carefully videotaping his battlefield exploits and by -- through the use of those videotapes and distributing them, particularly to potential backers in the Arab Gulf countries, was able to raise money for the cause of jihad.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The First Chechen War came to an end in August of 1996 when there was an accord signed between the Chechen government and the Russian government. That was essentially a cease-fire that put off the question of Chechnya's ultimate status.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Not exactly. The country, of course, had been devastated by the first war, and there was no possibility of any investment inside of Chechnya coming in from the outside to rebuild it. The jihadists saw this, again, as a wonderful -- saw -- believed that they had won the great victory in Chechnya. They had claimed the Chechen victory as their own. They sought to further exploit this victory. So more jihadis began to arrive in Chechnya. They were well-funded, and in a country that's been devastated by war, one of the best or the only ways to get employment was to join with jihadi brigades. Training camps were established inside of Chechnya. This jihadi movement then challenged the government inside of Chechnya and essentially became a state within a state. And in 1999, they invaded the neighboring Republic of Dagestan, part of the Russian Federation. And as part of their plan to export jihad from Chechnya through the rest of the North Caucasus and then ultimately through all of the predominately Muslim areas of the Russian Federation, that was their ultimate goal. The invasion of Dagestan in 1999 then triggered what is known as The Second Chechen War where Russia then reinvaded Chechnya.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The second war lasted -- formal military operations lasted from 1999 until 2009.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No. That war was arguably even more destructive because the lesson that the Russian military and what Vladimir Putin took from the first war was that Russia had lost the first war because it fought with one arm tied behind its back effectively. And the Russian military was determined not to lose the second war and effectively used every means at its disposal to win that war.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Very difficult. Of course, Russia was at war inside of Chechnya, and Chechens were regarded, both in Russia and in the countries of the former Soviet Union, as both an unwanted element and often were targets for police harassment, and particularly extortion of bribes was very common.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, absolutely, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Well, he would -- what he would find on the internet would be that the Chechen cause is one that's very much intertwined with the cause of international jihad. I should state that in the second war the resistance in Chechnya increasing became limited just to diehard jihadis, both those Chechens who had joined the cause of jihad as well as the foreigners who had come to Chechnya for the purposes of waging jihad. Those jihadis were well-funded and established a prominent presence on the internet. And whenever one looks for anything regarding Chechnya or Chechen history, one almost immediately stumbles upon websites dedicated to jihad and that describe the wars in Chechnya as wars of jihadis.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I am.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, that is the leading website. It also has several -- established several related websites.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Kavkazcenter.com, the website which we just discussed.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I have.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, there were.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Exactly, that is the website.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I would divide -- basically, I would say there were three groups, three types of videos that --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Broadly speaking.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No. The vast majority had something to do with Islam.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: So I would say the first category would be instructional videos. Largely these are lectures where a single person is speaking. Some of them might be interviews where the speaker is explaining various points of Islamic doctrine, sometimes ritual. So they are effectively instructional videos. The second --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The instructional videos, there was a mix, both in English language and in Russian.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did. I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The second category, I would say, would be -- I would call atrocity.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. And these were videos portraying the atrocities committed against Muslims in various parts of the globe. Many in particular were from Syria, from the current Civil War in Syria, but other places as well, the Uighurs in China. And then I would say the third category -- sometimes these categories overlapped. But the third category, I would describe --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did. It was not difficult.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: I believe so, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: So the video that we're not going to show or more general? The video that I had selected, in particular, has scenes of the Civil War in Syria where depicted are -- and it's quite graphic -- Syrian civilians that have been -- suffered from shelling and bombing by the government of Syria. And the message over -- as a speaker, as these events --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The third category is one I would categorize as motivational videos.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Motivational. So these are videos predominantly from the Caucasus, Dagestan and Chechnya, also from other sites. But the -- parts of the globe where jihad is being waged. But the message here, it depicts jihadis in the mountains either in combat or preparing to go to combat, marching through the mountains. And they give one a sense of adventure. One sees a camaraderie.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: So depictions of -- one sees camaraderie, and one sees basically young men standing for something larger than themselves. So where -- the emphasize isn't the harm being done to Muslims. The harm is more -- the emphasis, rather, is sort of one -- one could be part of a greater cause, and being part of this greater cause is something that is very rewarding in an immediate sense of being part of a group and proving one's courage.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, there were.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Odnoklassniki is a Russian-language social media website. Odnoklassniki basically translates as classmates.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Classmates, correct. And I would -- very similar to Facebook. It's the same sort of social media site as Facebook.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. I can't say for certain it hadn't been done, but it was one where he distinguished himself from other jihadis.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Absolutely, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That's correct. It's in four languages. It has -- it's in Russian, English, Turkish, and Arabic.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Kavkaz Center or this particular part?

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Well, kavkazcenter.com, as I stated, is a jihadi website dedicated in particular to the support of jihad in the Caucasus, the North Caucasus even more specifically, so as materials, videos, showing jihadis fighting in the Caucasus, speaking to audiences about what they're doing. And then there are other materials explaining -- such as this textual materials, explaining what a Muslim is supposed to do, what are their obligations, what are the obligations of their faith.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: This is an announcement about a Chechen jihadist who was killed fighting in Syria.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No. There were many, many, many beside this. There were countless, it seemed.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. This is, I believe, Jahar Tsarnaev had sent to his brother Tamerlan while Tamerlan was in Dagestan, I believe.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I do. There had been email exchanges from Tamerlan to Jahar, and Tamerlan had sent a number of links and material related to and in support of jihad and jihadi interpretations of Islam. And most of those received the reply -- or virtually all of them, except for this one, received the reply of, That's interesting. There was no reply of any substantive nature. This is the one -- the reply that I saw that had anything substantive in it.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That's correct.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: So this is a link to a -- first, the website Ihlas -- I think it was a dot-org -- is a registered -- a website of an organization, a Muslim organization, located in Moscow. That's legal --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Located in Moscow.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, absolutely not. It is one that is registered, operates openly, and, as I would describe it, probably as a philanthropical educational institution. They have classes for both adults and for children to instruct them in the basics of the Islamic faith as well as they also carry out charitable activities.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. No, this is one that is registered and operates very much in the open.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Right. So the link is to a text that's taking -- that comes from a Muslim mystic, perhaps the most famous, by the name of Ibn Arabi. He lived in the 12th and 13th Centuries. The text is from a larger work of his known as Shajarat al-Kawn, which translates essentially to the Tree of Being. And the text of the -- is -- depicts or describes an imaginary encounter between the Prophet Muhammad and Satan. And they have a conversation in which Muhammad asks Satan what the things that either make you very happy and then what are the things that upset you? And the sorts of things that -- the emphasis of the text is that the things that people do in their everyday lives such as if you -- things that drive Satan crazy are when someone performs their ablutions, that is, the ritual washing and getting ready for prayer. That drives him crazy. What makes him happy is when someone lies, when a divorce takes place. Ibn Arabi is a mystic that was reviled by jihadis. This is an interpretation of Islam that is poles apart from the Salafi interpretation of Islam and the jihadi interpretation of Islam. They regard -- jihadis regard Ibn Arabi essentially as a blasphemer, as an apostate, as utterly contemptible. And that's the thing that really struck me looking at this message. Of all the things to send back --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Of all the texts to send back, this is one from Ibn Arabi, who, again, is a figure, an Islamic thinker, who is reviled and very strongly reviled -- and I choose that word carefully -- reviled by jihadis. The text of it is very much about everyday sorts of activities that people -- everyday life they engage in. There is no reference to jihad or any kind of fighting or killing in this text.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, you did ask me to look into that line, and I can say it was certainly not an original one.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That line and variations of it -- so sometimes one sees, instead of -- there's the barrel of a gun in some. Others refer to a barrel of a pistol. So there are slight variations. One -- I found this widespread throughout Russian-language social websites used primarily by Muslims but not only Muslims. There are a number of non-Muslims. One finds it on their websites. One finds it now used in reference to the current conflict in Ukraine.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: No, not at all. There are no Muslims virtually involved in the conflict in Ukraine. It's used in both sides. After -- it seems to have become quite popular after 2010. There was a noted increase in its usage. And I would say the average -- it struck me the most commonly it seemed to be used by people sort of posing on their --

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Posing, right, trying to look cool on their websites. It has sort of an interesting ring to it. Some people who posted this -- the quote -- I searched for the origins as well, who first originally uttered this and where did it come from. Some people who posed -- who posted it claim that it came from an Afghan in the 19th Century who had been fighting the British. That is the closest claim I found to a source for the citation, although that strikes me as largely probably an invented origin.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. It's very much ubiquitous, found, again, all throughout Russian-language social media, websites, and used by a wide range of people, generally males in their teenage years, early 20s, mostly Muslim but not solely Muslim. And, again, even some Ukrainians on both sides have invoked it.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Magomed Kartoshov lives in Dagestan. He is the chairman of an organization known as the Union of the Just.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Union of the Just is an organization that was founded for the protection of the rights of Muslims inside of Dagestan, and a particular concern of it has been protecting the rights of Muslims from the police in -- against violation by the police and security services inside of Dagestan.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, it does have a fair following. The numbers of the organization itself are not known, but one can see it can bring out several thousand people for rallies inside of Dagestan.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: That is correct, yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. There has been an insurgency going on in Dagestan for the last -- well, one can say it starts shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union but certainly within the last 15 years. And it's ongoing today.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: The Union of the Just -- from all the materials that I've reviewed, the Union of the Just is one that is -- I would say them as being sympathetic to the insurgents. They don't outwardly advocate the use of violence, but they do not condemn it. And they are very quick to criticize the police and security services for their treatment of accused or suspected jihadists and other insurgents. And they are -- it's an organization that aspires to the -- I mean, Kartoshov himself has explained in interviews that he wishes to see the establishment of Islamic law inside of Russia, that he desires the reestablishment of the Caliphate. That is, the Caliphate was the political union of all Muslims that have existed that was founded by the Prophet Muhammad and then existed with the four -- what they call the four righteously guided successors to Muhammad. And the Union of the Just seeks to recreate this political union of all Muslims throughout the world.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, they are.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes. So there are both interviews with Kartoshov where he explains his views, and then there are multiple videos of Kartoshov speaking at rallies.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: It is. It is affiliated -- shares the same world view and program as an organization known as Hizb ut-Tahrir.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Okay. Usually that's -- there are a number of ways one can spell it. The phonetic way would be H-i-z-b, and then the next word would be u-t, dash, T -- usually the second T is capitalized -- a-h-r-i-r. And "Hizb" means basically party. "Tahrir" means liberation. So it means the Party of Liberation, in particular, Islamic liberation.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global organization and has members all throughout the world, and it aspires to the restoration of the Caliphate, again, the political union of all Muslims.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes, I did.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: They were in Russian.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: They were about six hours, maybe slightly more than six hours. Excuse me, rather, I mean, slightly more than three hours. They were generally about 30 minutes to 40 minutes apiece.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Usually around four, but sometimes there's some voices in the background. But the majority of it usually speaking is about four people.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Yes.

MICHEL REYNOLDS: Thank you.